Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation. "The vast and radical innovations of the mid-20th century took place in a world that, in retrospect, looks insanely dangerous and unstable." An interesting rant by a great thinker.

So yesterday Apple announced the iPhone 4S - Tim Cook's first product announcement since taking over as CEO - and I gather it went well. IOS 5, faster processor, spiffy new camera, and (yay!) dual-band support, now supported by Sprint. The last is the most important to me; I've loved my iPhone, but I haven't loved Verizon, and I'm *so* ready to switch back to Sprint. I'm hoping to get out of my two-year contract based on the consistently poor reception I've experienced at my house; fXf! With all the rumors swirling, it was good to get the concrete announcement, whew.

This looks cool: Researchers transform iPhone into microscope. And that was the old 5Mp iPhone 4, imagine what could be done with the new 8Mp iPhone 4S? They've already disrupted low-end cameras, maybe they'll disrupt low-end microscopes too.

Saw and enjoyed Moneyball. A great movie made from a great book. It couldn't have been easy to boil down the entire book into one movie which captured the essence, but that's what they did; similar in fact to what Michael Lewis does when he writes in the first place.

Tesla Model S prototypes are out and being shown, and apparently there will be a sportier version of the all-electric sedan, too. Wow I can't wait. This could be our next car. We have a 10-year old Jaguar sedan which is mostly used for tooling around town...

With the advent of the new Kindles (including the Fire) I've been ruminating on ebooks. What's interesting is that ebooks are potentially a disruptive technology; could be the "publishers" who are successful in ebooks will be different from those who were in pbooks. That's what is happening with music. Perhaps there will be a Pandora-like service to find us new books?

Wired ran a great flashback article: 10/3/47, Birth of Palomar's 'Giant Eye'. The 200 inch mirror took 10 years to polish - by hand! I've visited the observatory and seen the telescope itself, quite amazing, especially when you consider the technology available when it was built.

Fran Tarkenton imagines the NFL run like our public schools: "Each player’s salary is based on how long he’s been in the league. It’s about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he’s an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster." Communism never works.

Related: The Jobs Agenda. "I don’t know what Steve Jobs’s politics were, I don’t much care, and in any case they are beside the point. The late Mr. Jobs stood for something considerably better than politics. He stood for the model of the world that works... Once you figure out why your cell phone gets better and cheaper every year but your public schools get more expensive and less effective, you can apply that model to answer a great many questions about public policy." Indeed. Highlight is mine.

ZooBorn of the day: a baby Langur. Apparently they are born bright orange, and turn black within six months. How excellent. Interesting to wonder about this adaptation; is this so their parents can easily find them when they're lost?